


So Dark

by BeneficialAddiction



Series: Boxers, Briefs, and Other Shorts [12]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, So Dark - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Amazon Prime Original, BAMF Phil Coulson, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Dexter of vampires, OFC - Freeform, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Protective Phil Coulson, She's not important - Freeform, So Dark, This show could've been so good, Vampire Clint Barton, Vampires, and not really original..., and the characters know it, cute crossover, still better than Twilight
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-11-04 14:38:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10992969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeneficialAddiction/pseuds/BeneficialAddiction
Summary: "Critics call Amazon'sSo Dark'A supernatural horror/thriller about a Vampire with a code who hunts and feeds on those that have escaped justice.'"





	1. So Pretty

Lisa McCallum is exhausted when she steps onto the Nine El after an eighteen-hour shift. It had been a long day at the hospital, too long, and after being kept behind on mandation when half of second shift called in, she’s very nearly dead on her feet at two am Saturday morning. It’s chilly outside, too cold for mid-May, and goosebumps break out on her arms as she takes a seat, but she’d forgotten her jacket in her haste to get to work and all she’s wearing are her thin, short-sleeved scrubs. 

Still, Lisa's not a stupid girl. She knows to listen to her instincts. As she digs her battered copy of Twilight out of her bag, she casts a surreptitious look around the subway car, her gaze assessing each occupant to determine if it’s one of her fellow passengers who really caused the hair to stand up on the back of her neck. 

In the back an elderly man in neat khakis and a bright yellow polo sits quietly, looking straight ahead. He has close-cropped grey hair and a face marked with laugh lines – someone’s grandfather. Further up there’s a woman with her legs up along two seats – a crackhead wallowing through her drop, hair stringy and eyes bruised. In front of her a young man, college guy, cute, huddled inside a purple hoodie and listening to music with his eyes closed, probably half asleep. Not a threat. 

The other guy though, the last guy, he makes her a little nervous. Gang thug by the looks of it, Hispanic and covered in tattoos. 

She’s not racist, she’s not. 

She’s no idiot either. 

A native New Yorker born and raised, she considers herself pretty street-smart, and book-smart enough to have made number one charge nurse in her wing at the local hospital. Her instincts are good and she’s got the well-developed sense of danger growing up in the Burroughs gives a pretty girl. 

So she angles herself right, turns a little in her seat so that she’ll see if the guy moves, but with the other people in the car she mostly feels safe and cracks her book without much hesitation. 

She loves this story. 

“I read all those. Interesting take on vampires.” 

Blinking, Lisa looks up and finds sleepy college-guy no longer asleep, but standing beside her, much closer than before and leaning against one of the steel support poles. He’s even cuter up close, not too tall but obviously fit, with broad shoulders and floppy blond hair that hangs just a little bit into his eyes. He’s grinning at her but it’s a little shy, and little unsure, and isn’t that just adorable. 

“Me too,” she replies, offering him a smile. “This one’s my fave though. Third time.” 

“It’s where they meet for the first time right?” 

Huh. 

Maybe he actually _has_ read them. 

That’s… kinda cute. 

“Yeah,” she nods, looking the guy up and down. ‘Not exactly the place for a pick-up cutie pie,’ she thinks, but he’s hot and seems a little shy too, which is a refreshing change from the aggressive, forward, jock-types who typically approached her. 

“Seems like everyone’s infatuated with vampires these days,” he says with quiet consideration before turning, bright intense eyes on her. “They either wanna date one or… _be_ one.” 

“You talking about the hair?” Lisa chuckles, carding her fingers through her sleek, coal black locks. “Yeah. I got all vamped up for a costume party a few weeks ago. Just couldn’t seem to let the color go.” 

The guy tilts his head, looks her over as a grin tips the corners of his mouth. 

“It suits you,” he says quietly. “I’m Clint.” 

Tilting her own head, Lisa gives him a once-over of her own, makes a decision. 

“Lisa.” 

She's kind of hoping he'll take it from there – she's not looking for a committed relationship but she's no stranger to dating for dinner. Looks like he's be good in the sack too, but he doesn't reply, doesn't make an offer to grab coffee or a drink, so instead of letting herself be disappointed she goes back to her book. 

"I just have a real hard time believing it would be so easy to be a vampire these days." 

He's closer now, sitting on the seat beside her, and it's back to the vampire thing so maybe he's just nervous, socially awkward? Makes sense, if he doesn't know how good looking he is – he's kind of horrifically bad at this. 

"Wasn't Bram's version," he frowns, and he actually sounds annoyed. 

"Bram?" she asks, and she's heard that before but it's his pouting that confuses her. 

"Bram Stoker?" he says incredulously, his gaze flicking back up to hers. "He wrote Dracula? Pretty much put vampires on the map?" 

"Oh, I remember that movie," she hums, settling back in her seat. "With Keanu Reeves? It was pretty awful." 

"So you're a fan of vampires but you didn't like Dracula?" 

"Nope!" she laughs, amused by his disgruntled expression. "Sorry. Boring." 

"Well, maybe being a vampire's not supposed to be so glamorous," the guy – Clint – argues. "Always hunted. Truly cursed in love and then there's the _decisions."_

"Decisions?" she asks quizzically, and he looks up at her calm and cool and collected. 

"Of who to kill." 

His head turns, sharp and harsh to the right and he stares off down the length of the train, quiet and contemplative before he turns back to her again. 

"To live with the guilt of playing God..." 

Frowning, Lisa flicks her hair back, closes her book around her finger and holds turns the cover toward him. 

"I think they would just eat animals, like the Cullens," she points out, but Clint scoffs, quiet and derisive in the back of his throat. 

_"Humans_ eat animals," he answers her, before quickly standing up and taking a few steps away, leaning back against the support pole and watching their fellow passengers. "Not vampires. You still want to be a vampire, if you had to kill people?" 

Lisa looks him up and down, but what the hell, it's fiction right? Hypotheticals. She's just a nurse – she'll never have to make the really big calls, those kinds of decisions. 

"I think so. They're just so... mysterious. So misunderstood. The way they glitter in the sun. So pretty."

"Really?" 

He says it quietly, distantly, then turns and sits down beside her again, leaning forward, shoulders hunched in that purple jacket of his, eager, intent. 

"Then humor me for a second. You're a vampire, who likes to hunt on late night trains..." 

Jerking his chin, he nods off up the length of the car, toward their fellow passengers. 

"Which one?" 

He says it so deeply, so darkly, that for a minute her breath catches, the sudden weight of the question heavy on her shoulders, but she shakes it off, reminds herself it's just a game. 

"You don't think I could do it, do you?" She asks, to buy herself some time, but Clint just comes slinking down off his chair to land on his knees beside her, close, too close for a subway with his arm wrapped around the seat at her back. 

"Then do it," he insists, eyes sharp and bright, a smirk flickering around the edges of his mouth. 

Lisa huffs, sits up straighter and surveys her choices, then indicates her decision with a nod of her own chin. 

"The big guy, with all the tats." 

"Why him?" 

_"Because,"_ she declares, "He looks like a thug, like he's a gang member. 

Beside her Clint smiles, chuckles under his breath. 

"Who knows, he could be a big teddy bear. Maybe he's a hard working man with three children at home and a loving wife." 

Lisa sniffs, rolls her eyes. 

"Or maybe he's a gang member." 

Clint eyes her, assessing, and she gets the impression he sees a lot deeper into her than she'd like him to, but then he blinks, rocks back on his heels, putting just a tiny bit more space between them. 

"So you'd pick people based on their looks?" he demands, sounding entirely unimpressed. 

"Why not?" she counters with half a laugh, tossing her hair. "Gotta feed right?" 

His turn to roll his eyes. 

"Sooner or later it'd get to you," he says seriously, before flicking his gaze down the length of the car again. "But I think there's a better candidate over there." 

Tilting her head, she frowns, then makes her second choice. 

"Then the crackhead," she determines, "Over there." 

"Why her?" 

"I hate people that do drugs," she complains, thinking about the countless meth addicts and heroin users that come through the hospital every day. "Such a drain on society." 

"Maybe she's just sick," Clint sighs, rocking with the swaying motion of the car, "Has a nervous disposition." 

"Ok then Dr. Phil," Lisa scoffs, putting her hand flat on his chest and pushing him back into the seat behind him, swinging around to face him full on, _"You_ pick one." 

"The old man," he replies immediately, and the way he says it, in that deep, level tone, staring at her so straight and serious puts a sudden chill down her spine. 

"Why him?" she asks, shivery again as goosebumps prickle over her forearms. "He looks harmless." 

"His name is Edgar Wilcox," Clint says calmly. "He's a retired autoworker and he actually _does_ have three children and a loving wife." 

A beat passes where Lisa can feel her heart pound in her throat and Clint's head turns to stare at the man dead on, cold and flat and terrible. 

"He's also a pedophile." 

This time she thinks her heart stops. 

"How... _why_ do you know this," she whispers, mouth gone dry, and Clint turns to face her again, slow and easy, like they're discussing anything else but this. 

"Because I _have_ to live with the decisions," he says, and then he's getting to his feet, lifting his hood up over his head and hiding half his face. "You're gonna wanna get off this train now." 

He casts no reflection in the window behind him. 

Lisa's blood turns to ice in her veins and she reacts on pure, animal instinct, the initial chill she'd felt now turned to ancient alarm bells screaming in the back of her mind. Survival tactics take over and she stands without thought, leaving her things behind and passing Clint with a shivery whine caught at the back of her throat. He lets her by but watches her as she moves to the doors, watches her like a predator watches prey, his gaze heavy on her shoulders, and she slaps her palms against the glass as a plea scrapes it's way up out of her chest. 

"Open," she whimpers as the train begins to lurch, coming to a slow, grinding stop. 

The _thing_ moves down the line, it's hands trailing against the seats and she can't bear to look, beats helplessly against the glass even when a primordial screech and a low shout echo from the back of the train car, a holler from the Hispanic thug and frantic screams from the crackhead. There's nothing left to know – she doesn't need to see the bright spray of arterial blood across the windows to know what's happened. 

She's read all the books. 

The doors finally part and she takes a lurching step out onto the deserted platform, only to be knocked to her knees by the fleeing gangster, the tile coming up fast to meet her. She scrabbles up, clawing, desperate, the fear pounding and metallic in her throat, but before she even makes it a step she hears her name, a deep snarl like she'll hear in her nightmares for years to come. 

"Lisa!" 

Desperate, terrified, she's compelled to turn, forced to confront the thing with the shy, sunny, college boy's face, now made grotesque by ice blue eyes, pinprick pupils, long, sharp teeth and a smearing of thick rust. 

It raises it's hand, wipes flowing rivulets from its chin and smirks. 

"Ain't so pretty now are we?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously guys, try this show. It's kinda campy and badly acted and only got the prologue and one episode off the ground but it's one of those shows where the potential is so *damn* strong. It makes you long for what could have been,
> 
> Pretty much took all plot and all dialogue from So Dark - no copyright infringement intended. I did not write it myself - this is going to be one of those things where I take the poorly treated first episode and write the 'what could have been' to satisfy my own needs. Hope you enjoy it!


	2. So Long

Senior Agent Phillip J Coulson hears the whispers as soon as he steps inside the precinct – _Government in the building._ They rattle against the walls, hiss in his ears and slither against his skin; he can almost _feel_ the capital 'G' in that single, scathing word. 

It's almost cute, considering what they think of him – State, or Fed, standard issue alphabet agency. 

They couldn't be more clueless. 

To be fair it's barely four AM. The local beat cops are tired, unsettled by the early morning's events, and resentful of Phil's encroachment onto their territory. For his part he couldn't care less what they think, of him or anything else really, but for the fact that their naivete, their petty push-back could easily get them all killed. 

Contrary to appearances, SHIELD _did_ try to limit collateral damage where at all possible. 

So. 

He puts on his _everyman_ face, his _kindly-get-out-of-my-way-and-let-me-do-my-job_ face. Marches through the hallways in his favorite D &G, his best _don't-fuck-with-me_. suit. He has a lot of those, he muses, but it pays to be prepared, to do his homework and make sure he's the smartest, most underestimated man in the room. 

Not difficult here. 

"Agent Coulson!" a detective calls loudly, too close as he pops out from a side hallway, a pathetic attempt to toss Phil off his stride that doesn't work. "Jasper Sitwell," he offers with a slick, snakeoil salesman's grin as he holds out his hand. "We just spoke on the phone. That was _fast."_

"Detective Sitwell," he nods solemnly, pointedly ignoring the man's offer for a handshake. 

"Right," he says slowly, surprised by the rebuff. "Um... this way." 

Phil turns, follows his gesture and tries not to roll his eyes. 

"Anyway, he's uh, not speaking," Sitwell continues, clearly not picking up on Phil's complete and utter disinterest in anything he has to say. "But he hasn't lawyered up yet." 

"He won't," he replies, flat and entirely certain of this conviction. 

"What makes you so sure?" 

This time Phil does sigh, but refrains from pinching the bridge of his nose the way he wants to. 

"I really can't say." 

Sitwell pauses, pulls back, looks him up and down like he can't believe Phil's audacity but he's always had the balls to back up his brass, and he doesn't flinch, doesn't let a glimmer of weakness show. 

"Right," he finally laughs, nervous and irritated, and yup, there's the pinch. 

"So how did you catch him?" he asks, slightly more interested and polite if only to keep this man useful, malleable. 

"Idiot stayed on the train!" Sitwell declares, all feigned shock and wide grins and hard, sharp laughter now that Phil's playing good cop. "Witness, Lisa McCallum called police. Had a few of our boys go pick him up at the next stop. Gave up without a fight." 

Sitwell shrugs as they turn a corner in the quiet back hallway of the precinct. 

"He's like a kitten now." 

"Well," Phil says flatly, eyes sharp as he takes in the scene around him – tiled hallway, freight elevator, the blonde crackhead sitting huddled in a chair in the corner. "The man I'm following? He's no idiot. He likes people to think he is but it's an _act._ He's not stupid, and definitely not a kitten." 

"Whatever you say," Sitwell chuffs, holding up his hands in a classic non-threatening pose. "Not the first time New York PD's had to do a Fed's job. Don’t take it personal." 

Phil ignores him in favor of the second detective emerging from the freight elevator, suddenly on high alert. He's used to listening to his instincts, and all the hair on the back of his neck's just stood up. 

"Detective Rumlow," he greets, and Phil _does_ shake _his_ hand, knows intimately the need to understand this man, to keep him as unsuspecting as possible. 

His eyes are dark and sharp, like a rat's. 

"Agent Coulson," he answers in kind, bland, so terribly, painfully bland. 

"You think this is your guy?" 

It's too eager, too intense, and that little prickle races across his skin a second time. 

"I'd have to see him first," Phil grants, even though he doesn't, even though he _knows._ "Where is he?" 

"He's in the basement," Sitwell answers, dropping his eyes and shrugging when Phil flicks him a look. "You _said_ no windows, no cameras. It's the only spot we have." 

Of course it is. 

Tiny precinct, underfunded, completely unequipped... 

"Who's she?" he asks, changing track quickly to shake them, to get an honest response and because he needs to know. 

"She saw the whole thing," Rumlow replies, watching her over Phil's shoulder. "She was stuck on the train with him, until the next stop." 

Another flicker of... _something,_ hot and electric in the pit of his belly. He turns, looks at her again, more closely. He doesn't recognize her, can't place her face, but there's something about her that has him on high alert. 

But perhaps it's the precint, perhaps the late hour or the lack of coffee or the fact that he's finally, _finally_ got his quarry at bay. 

"Did he speak to you?" he asks gently, placing his briefcase on the floor at his side and crouching down in front of her, trying to catch her gaze. She's thin, nearly gaunt, her hair thin and stringy and bleached within an inch of its life, dark, heavy makeup streaming down her cheeks, a quintessential New York drug addict. "When it was just the two of you, on the train?" 

Again nothing, just a blank stare from glassy green eyes until Phil snaps his fingers in front of her face and she jumps. 

"What?" she yips, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. "He didn't _say_ anything!" 

Frowning, Phil pushes to his feet, collects his briefcase and steps back toward the elevator. 

"I want to talk to her next," he says sharply, stepping into the waiting car. 

"Look, if this is something big we want in on it," Sitwell huffs, leaning around the edge of the gate. "This was _our collar."_

"What do you _think_ it is?" Phil demands, making his exasperation clear, but Sitwell just shrugs. 

"Just another wack-job all hopped up on bath salts. Dude tried to eat the guy's face." 

"Then you're probably right," Phil says with his smoothest shit-eating-grin. Moron. "You two will get _all_ the credit. Did the victim have any priors?" 

"Nothing," Rumlow replies, "Not even a speeding ticket." 

"And the suspect, did he give you his name?" 

"Said it was Clint. Nothing more." 

It's him. 

Fuck, it's really him. 

For the first time it really hits Phil, stuns him, that the man he's hunted for so long is truly here, within arm's reach. Just flights away, moments, after eluding him so masterfully, for _so long..._

"Take your _finger_ off the button," he snarls, letting just a little bit of his carefully hidden badass through, and Sitwell actually pales before lifting his hand from the wall where it's been hidden from Phil's sight, takes a step back. 

The gate of the elevator rolls down slowly and Phil is swept down into darkness.

**AVAVA**

"You know," Sitwell rumbles, shrugging his shoulders and hitching up his slacks. "If I wanted to deal with shit all night I'd have gone into nursing."

The woman in the corner listens quietly, studies them carefully as they step back from the elevator and walk back up the hallway toward her. Sitwell, his badge reads, and jealousy rolls off him, makes him sour. 

"I'm going down for medianoches, you want in?" he asks as they pass, badge and keys and handgun heavy on his belt. 

"Nah, I'm good," Rumlow answers, his eyes lingering on the elevator gates. 

"You don't know what you're missing," Sitwell sing-songs, and they both disappear up the hallway, neither paying any attention whatsoever to the druggie they've left shivering on a chair in the corner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much for one-shots.


	3. So What?

It's him. 

Phil knows it as soon as he steps into the cool, dingy basement they're keeping him in, before he's even taken a step out of the lift toward him. He's bent double, head resting on his arms which are folded at an awkward angle where he's cuffed to the side. He's nothing but a tuft of golden hair and the sleeves of a purple hoodie, but Phil would recognize those shoulders anywhere. 

Vampires do photograph of course, much more easily now in the digital age. Back when silver emulsion was used in the development of film they were obviously more difficult to capture – mirrors often still use a bit of silver in their backing which contributes to their lack of reflection. Despite all this Clinton Francis Barton has managed to keep himself off most everyone's radar if not SHEILD's. 

This is absolutely Clint Barton. 

Crossing the floor, Phil watches him carefully as he approaches, sits down in the single chair on the other side of the table. He doesn't move, not a bit – no flinching, no tensing, no _breathing_ \- and really it's rather impressive. That he doesn't even raise his head to get an idea of who's sitting across from him either says something about his stupidity or his confidence, though Phil isn't yet sure which. Placing his briefcase on the table, he opens the lid by keying in the three combinations and adding his fingerprint scan, then takes out several items; a pen, a pad of paper, a small, wooden crucifix. 

"Clint Barton," he says, casual and calm. "Tell me why you're here tonight." 

The man across from him doesn't respond. 

Sighing, Phil places the nearly empty briefcase to the side, slowly slides the crucifix across the tabletop. As it inches closer to the man it starts to rattle violently, till it's practically jumping off the table, and when there are only three inches left between it and Barton's arm he suddenly sits up, ramrod straight in his chair, eyes flashing. 

Phil is ready. 

He clicks the penlight in his hand on quickly, then clicks it off just as fast, but Clint is hissing and spitting and flinching away even in that brief moment, the small beam of UV light hitting him on the side of the face and causing blisters to erupt, his pupils to shrink to pinpricks. Snarling, he lunges forward as if to grab Phil by the neck, only to be brought up short by the handcuffs. He fangs have grown long and sharp in his mouth, his skin pale, blood dried in a smear over his chin and down across his throat and the look on his face is almost childishly confused and offended, like Phil has broken the arbitrary rules of some silly game just to break them. 

"Sorry," he says, tucking the light away and making a note on his pad, a confirmation of all their suspicions that yes, Barton _is_ a vampire. "You're a hard man to read and I had to be sure. At least you don't sparkle right?" 

"I already tried explaining that once tonight," Barton groans, leaning down so that he can rub the side of his face, where the blistering and inflammation has already healed. 

Phil hums, runs his eyes over the man's temple, the hinge of his jaw because he _does_ feel bad but the man really is fine, his vampiric features already hidden beneath a remarkably attractive human façade. 

Wait, what? 

"Tell me why you're here tonight," Phil repeats, stunned that his voice stays smooth and calm this time, doesn’t crack in the middle. 

Yes, Barton was attractive, Phil had known that from the single picture they'd uncovered, from his days with Carson's Carnival just before he was turned, but he'd thought he'd put that away, hadn't thought it would strike him here, now, with Barton sitting in front of him in what was essentially an interrogation. 

"Why don't you tell me why _you're_ here," Barton rumbles, dragging his hand over his face one more time, callous rasping against stubble before he sits back in his little steel chair, stretching out in his best approximation of an insolent slouch. "Because we both know you're no alphabet soup. What did you tell them – FBI, NSA? Sounds good on you, the way you dress." 

Barton's eyes drag over Phil nice and slow, make him glad he'd worn his nicest D&G in a well-fit, navy blue. 

"Could be your line of work." 

"But we both know it's not," Phil replies with the barest hint of a smirk. "As it is, I _was_ alphabet soup at one time. Army Ranger, then freelance for CIA." 

"And now?" 

"And now I've added on a few letters." 

Straightening up, Phil takes his phone from his pocket and holds it up, watches Clint's eyes lock on it before he opens the recording app and starts a new file, puts it down on the table and fishes out his badge. 

"Mr. Barton, my name is Agent Phillip J Coulson and I work for the Supernatural House of the Intervention, Enforcement, and..." 

_"SHIELD,"_ Barton hisses, his eyes going black as he bares his teeth once more. 

"You've heard of us." 

"I've heard of what you _do_ to things like me," he snarls quietly, his body pressing as far back from Phil now as he can get in the chair that's been bolted to the concrete floor, the steel cuff biting into the skin of his writs. "You offered us a cure, played on the one weakness we have left, made us _hope._ And then you slaughtered every one of us who trusted you." 

Phil licks his lips, swallows hard, because there's sour bile at the back of his throat, shame and disgust heavy in his belly. It's true, everything he's said is true, but that's not what Phil stands for, not what he _fights_ for. 

"That was the old SHIELD," he manages to say, in a voice that's all of his calm and cool and command. "A broken fraction of an old-world ideal, an infiltration. _HYDRA._ But we've cleaned house, started over..." 

"Why should I believe that?" Clint spits. 

"Because it's the truth," Phil answers simply, and even though it's really no better than a standard lie detector test, fallible just like any human thing, he knows that Clint can hear his heartbeat hold steady over the words. "There were... _experiments_ done. Studies, to... understand your limits. The Boxes..." 

Phil takes a breath, lets it out, tries not to let the shudder threatening at the base of his spine show. 

"How long could a vampire starve before they committed suicide?" he murmurs, the horrors of those files scrolling slowly at the back of his mind. "They opened the timelockes every day during the sun's zenith for five minutes. A vampire could either starve... or have their freedom." 

"Cute little social experiment," Clint growls, low and angry. "And you think we're the monsters. The one's who've lost our humanity." 

"I don't think that," Phil argues mildly. 

"Then why _are_ you here, Agent Phillip J Coulson?" 

"I know what you're thinking," he says, settling back in his chair, crossing one ankle over his knee beneath the table, unbuttoning his jacket, which he'd waited to do just to make this point, this point of relaxing and tucking in. "I know the answer you want. That I'm here with a sob story, something that you could understand. Maybe vampires slaughtered my family and I'm out for revenge, here to kill you the way SHIELD's _supposed to."_

Looking Clint dead on, Phil allows himself a smirk. 

"Sorry to disappoint. You'll have to settle for ambition. I don't plan on spending my life as a pawn or a sideplayer... and I don't think you do either." 

The vampire is waiting now, as clearly as any predator waits, his eyes narrowed not in anger but in curiosity. It's the hook, the bait, the lure Phil hopes will bring him in, and it's time to tug on the line. 

"So," he says, that one, single word heavy with question, with potential. 

Clint tilts his head, runs his eyes over him once more before tracing his tongue slowly over the points of his eyeteeth. 

"So _what?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aw, guys, they took it off Amazon. Sad face :(


	4. So Easy

Natasha gives the cop twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to get back with his disgusting sandwich, to settle in and get comfortable. She sits stone-still, like marble, like an addict drugged up to the gills and shocked into a stupor and it's easy to fake, but she hates every second of it. 

She may be the human between the two of them, but she hates letting Clint out of her sight. 

He tends to get himself into trouble when she does. 

As it is, she thinks this is all a stupid plan. There's no reason for it, other than Clint's ridiculous curiosity, the sense of humor so dark that it sometimes borders on a death wish. 

She's waited long enough. 

Pushing herself to her feet, she stumbles down the hallway, using the wall to keep herself upright. The cop, Sitwell, barely looks up when she appears in his doorway, only just suppressing a roll of his eyes. 

"Can I get a jacket?" she asks in a hoarse whisper, "Maybe a cup of coffee?" 

"Sorry darlin,'" he sniffs sarcastically, his mouth full. "This ain't no bed and breakfast." 

"Come on man," she pouts, stamping her foot and making sure her breasts jiggle in her low-cut tank top. "I'm crashin' here." 

Sitwell sighs, glares at her like he thinks he knows what she's doing, then throws down the last of his sandwich and gets to his feet, shoulder checking her on his way out the door. 

"Wait here," he demands. "Try not to puke on anything." 

Idiot. 

Makes it _so_ easy. 

It takes less than three seconds for her to locate his keyring in his top desk drawer, right on top of the latest issue of Playboy. She's got more than enough time to wreak a little havoc on his computer system so she types in a few simple lines of code that will delete his emails anytime he hits the send button, considers choking down the rest of his sandwich just to teach him a lesson but decides against it. 

It's not worth the taste of grease in the back of her mouth.

**AVAVA**

"Six thirty-six," Coulson says calmly, glancing at his wrist watch. "Sunrise isn't until seven oh' two, in case you were wondering."

Clint refrains from rolling his eyes – he doesn't need analog time to know when the sun will be here. He can sense it in his bones, in the borrowed blood that boils beneath his skin, in the sick, frightened feeling in the pit of his stomach. It's already starting to tickle at the back of his neck, shiver along his spine. 

It's getting close. 

"Don't worry," the man across from him says, his voice full of affected reassurance. "I've got a nice, dark transport en route for you." 

This time Clint smirks, full on smiles at the guy with all his considerable charm. He's cute, handsome even, much more attractive than Clint had anticipated, though thus far it hadn't really changed anything. They're both here for a reason after all, but the guy, Agent Phillip J Coulson of SHIELD, seems content enough to sit across from him and study him, seems entirely calm knowing what Clint is, what he can do. 

As it is, Clint doesn't blame him for the UV beam. The burns have already healed, the blisters melting away to leave his face unmarred. He'd been... disappointed by the bluntness of the attack, but the man had apologized and actually sounded sincere, and his reasoning had been sound. 

Contrary to appearances, Clint _can_ be magnanimous. 

"Why'd you kill the old man on the train?" Coulson asks, suddenly and curiously. "He has no record; as far as I can tell it hasn't been your M.O." 

Clint cocks his head, looks at him with consideration before going with the truth instead of the usual line of bullshit. 

"I see things at night," he explains slowly, "Things you don't. Sometimes a store gets broken into, maybe someone gets mugged, even murdered. Sometimes I see a twelve year old kid gets out of a parked car with fifty bucks in his hand and tears in his eyes." 

Clint sees the dark look that comes into Coulson's eyes as he gives his reason, recognizes the wolf inside his ribcage that is the twin to the one inside of Clint's. It surprises him – he hadn't anticipated that – but it's enough to convince him to finish the story, to open his mouth and give the confession that could put him away forever, in an asylum or a SHIELD gulag. 

"And maybe I stop that kid," he says, grave and low in the cold quiet of the stone and steel basement they'd tossed him into. "And find out why the _fuck_ he's crying." 

"The victim's car," Coulson says, as if he's only just putting it all together. "I must say, I was disappointed the way you got caught. Shame really; I was getting so close." 

"Close," Clint snorts. "I had a brother when I was a kid. He used to chase me around a lilac bush in our yard, around and around. Agent Coulson, he was right behind me the entire time, and I didn't even know it. Besides," he says with a grin, leaning back in his chair and spreading his hands as wide as the cuffs will allow. "I needed to meet you." 

Coulson eyes him, offers him the slightest quirk of a smile. 

"You should have called," he deadpans. "I would have been happy to schedule you an appointment."

**AVAVA**

She hears Sitwell coming long before he looms up over her shoulder. His feet are loud on the tile floor, his shoes old and worn and his tread uneven, overweight from all the cheap street food he consumes. He hands her a paper cup of coffee from behind her, huffs when she offers him quiet, insincere thanks. Slipping a police windbreaker over her shoulders, his hands skirt her breasts on the way back down, just this side of inappropriate.

"Better?" he asks indignantly. 

"Yeah." 

She isn't surprised when she feels his hand grab her ass, squeeze, trail down her bare leg beneath her skirt. 

"Too bad you're so fucked up," he murmurs nastily in her ear. "You got a great ass." 

She barely has time to hide her smirk as another cop calls him from down the hall, watches him walk away with a supreme sense of satisfaction. 

Yup, easy. 

So easy, it's not even fun.

**AVAVA**

"Nah, I needed to meet you like this," Clint argues, gesturing to the medieval interrogation setup the cops are trying for with the crumbling brick and drippy pipes.

Coulson looks unamused, but Clint thinks it's delightful. 

"See, in here you have no reason to lie to me," he explains. "And I needed to find out if you SHIELD agents were as _fucked up_ as I thought you were." 

Coulson arcs an eyebrow, taps his fingers against the table, an intentionally visible tell. 

"And what's your assessment?" 

Clint grins, leans forward, like he's about to tell a secret. 

"I have some pictures on my wall of certain... individuals," he murmurs conspiratorially, flicking a blatant glance the folder lying inside Coulson's open briefcase, the edges of several photos peeking out the side. "You have all the same ones." 

Coulson frowns, looks from Clint to the closed folder and back again, but before he can speak the phone in his pocket beeps, signals an alert. Checking the screen, he scowls and gets to his feet, making a staying motion with his free hand. 

"Don't go anywhere," he says, and then he's walking away, back toward the freight elevator that will take him back to ground level. 

Clint watches him go, licks the edges of his teeth. 

Man's got a great ass. 

"I'll be here if you want me," he calls.


	5. So Bad

Ok. 

This looks bad. 

So, so bad. 

If the text he'd received from Detective Sitwell was anything to go on, things were about to go south very, very quickly. 

Phil brushes a hand down his tie as he steps back into the freight elevator, determinedly ignoring how off-balance he feels. Clint Barton was even more pretty in person than he'd prepared himself for, and despite the dire circumstances, the recent death and the fact that the man was handcuffed in the basement of a local precinct, there's a natural cheerfulness and flirtatiousness coming through in his grin and his words and his mischievous, kaleidoscope eyes that Phil finds painfully attractive. 

Physical attraction, chemistry Phil can handle. 

It's the rest of it that's throwing him; the fact that Barton had known all this time that it was SHIELD who were tailing him, that he'd actually been _interested_ in meeting with them, that he'd intentionally let himself be taken and had somehow... 

It's vigilantism, something that SHIELD actually frowns upon, surprise surprise. They may work in the shadows of legal authority but they're still an _organization,_ with hierarchy and protocol and standard procedure. Phil _hadn't_ known why Barton had killed Edgar Wilcox on that train tonight, and he can't say that he's sorry, feeling the same hot, dark satisfaction flash through the pit of his belly that had flashed in Barton's eyes when he thinks of when less predator off the street. Actions and consequences – Phil had always believed in them – it was the reason he'd joined the newly minted SHIELD in the first place, but Phil was pleased that Barton seemed amenable to a team approach, pleased that his targets matched the ones he'd somehow managed to sniff out of Phil's briefcase. 

SHIELD can _use_ him. 

Of course that's not to say Phil can't think of a few ways he'd like to use the man himself. 

Shit, _vampire._

Whatever. 

Barton had already proven himself to have some semblance of a moral code, and thanks to the experiments done by the old Hydra faction of SHIELD it was a well-kept secret that his kind had far more control than the horror movies and the hunters liked people to think. 

Phil wonders just how much begging it would take to get the guy to bite in bed, startling himself as the door of the elevator cranks upward with a metallic groan and lets him out into the back hallway. Those thoughts, while tantalizing, were entirely inappropriate and a distraction he couldn't afford at the moment. 

Steeling himself, he steps out into the hallway, frowns at the girl still huddled in the chair against the wall, the one that had witnessed Barton's attack on the train. He'll need to bring her along – SHIELD has people who specialize in convincing others that they didn't see what they really saw – but for now he has bigger problems. Sitwell is standing at the end of the hallway, tapping his toe impatiently, and just for that fit takes his time waltzing up the hallway.

**AVAVA**

So that's him.

The SHIELD agent. 

The one that has Clint so captivated. 

Natasha immediately hates him. 

He's a threat to her vampire, an unknown variable, and Clint's curiosity about the man is the reason they're in this whole mess in the first place. He's proven himself far more capable than anyone that's ever hunted them before – she thinks that's a more than adequate reason to keep their distance – but here they are. 

If she goes down there and finds Clint blistered or black and blue... 

Natasha swallows down the anger that has plagued her since childhood, the fury that burns too hot and too bright too fast, the violent tendencies that it's taken her so long to get a hold of. She doesn't have time for petty revenge – not now anyway. 

Abandoning her affected limp and wobbly stance, she slips down the hall and into the public restroom, turns the faucets on full blast. It only takes a minute to scrub Wilcox's dried blood from her cheek and her neck, to neaten her smudged makeup and pull off the stringy, lank wig she's been wearing. Pitching the greasy thing into the trashcan with a scowl, she flips out her thick red hair and pushes it out of her face, her appearance completely changed in the blink of an eye. 

Too easy. 

Soaking a wad of paper towels in the sink, she tucks them into her pocket and slips back into the hallway, heads toward the elevator. 

Show time.

**AVAVA**

"What is this?" Phil demands as he enters the bullpen, Sitwell and Rumlow and several other cops all grouped up around one of their computers.

"Found a match on your boy's prints," the detective in front of the monitor says, one J. Woo. "An open murder case out of the UK." 

Phil feels his stomach drop into his shoes – shit. 

"They've got a picture," Sitwell says smugly, a queasy sort of smirk on his face, and Phil bites down on a sneer, keeps his face carefully blank. 

The picture loads slowly but inexorably, the familiar _circle of death_ swirling around Woo's computer screen until it scrolls one pixel at a time down the screen, a black and white mugshot of a young man from long ago, a boy who's live hard and rough. To the casual observer, to _Phil_ it is undeniably Clint Barton, but to these cops... 

"1948?" Phil scoffs, "Are you kidding me?" 

What - it's his best option. 

"Look, why don't you tell us what's so big about this guy?" Sitwell demands, turning his ample backside on the desktop to face him, leaning forward like he thinks maybe he can convince Phil to buddy up to him, cop-to-cop. "I have _never_ seen the FED's move on somebody so fast." 

Phil sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose before gesturing at the computer screen, exaggerating his frustration, but not by much. 

"They just started migrating all these international databases," he explains, "It's obviously a glitch." 

The rest of the cops all stare at him, look entirely unimpressed. 

"He doesn't even look like he's thirty!" he snaps. 

A fine, fit, sexy thirty... 

Still nothing. 

_Double shit._

"Let me call my office and have them check it out," he huffs, pulling out his cell phone. 

His heart is thundering as he turns to step back out into the hallway, and as he leaves he hears Rumlow mutter at Woo to print the picture. 

This is so bad.

**AVAVA**

Natasha will never admit to the swoop of relief that bottoms out in her stomach when she darts out of the elevator and finds Clint waiting patiently at the table in the middle of the shitty little basement they'd dragged him to. The idiot looks great and looks smug about it, flushed and healthy with the night's feeding, and he's grinning at her the way he does when one of his harebrained schemes somehow pulls itself off.

Cheeky bastard. 

"Deep breath," he murmurs as she comings running up to his side, the keys jingling noisily in her hands as she struggles to find the right one. "Relax." 

Natasha glares at him – she can't relax, she's _pissed_ and he knows it, this was stupid, _stupid..._

The cuffs come free and she immediately hands him the paper towels, watches him quickly scrub off his lips and his chin and his throat where the blood had spilled from his mouth in a hot, thick rush, too fast for him to swallow. She shucks her jacket too – an NYPD jacket, for _fuck's sake_ – and he's got it on and her hands cuffed behind her back before she knows it. 

It's the only reason she doesn't punch him in the dick when he snags the SHIELD agent's card from his briefcase on the way out.

**AVAVA**

"I thought we scrubbed the databases," Phil hissed, his phone pressed to his ear as he watches the hallway for movement. 

"We did," Maria insists, but he can hear the frantic typing of the SHIELD HQ techies in the background. 

"Then why are his prints implicated in a British murder case that's over seventy years old?!" 

"We don't have jurisdiction over their information," she explains flatly, as if to a toddler for the fiftieth time. 

Phil scowls, turns and stalks down the hallway toward the elevator bay, his head down so he won't be stopped. If he is he might punch someone – these deadbeat New York cops are testing his patience more thoroughly than the AIM goons he deals with on a regular basis. 

He needs to get himself – and _Barton_ – out of here now. 

Stepping back into the elevator, he slams his fist against the button, listens to Maria attempt to placate him. 

"We're moving as fast as we can," she says, and Phil snarls down the line. 

"Not fast enough! I need that transport and all paperwork here now or this whole thing is going south. Fucking big city, smartass cops..." 

Phil takes a breath, recognizes the symptoms of an overload of frustration. He's running on about four hours sleep in the last three days, not enough food and too many cups of shitty breakroom coffee, and the habit he'd picked up in the Rangers of cursing viciously tends to reassert itself in moments like this. 

It most often ends in something being blown up – a fact with which Maria Hill is well aware. 

"Standby," she replies coolly, "Transport should be there in five. The Director is on the line with the DA's office right now." 

Phil isn't listening. 

As the elevator door begins to roll shut, he catches sight of a blue jacket, white letters straining across broad shoulders, sunny, golden hair glinting under fluorescent lights. A man, pulling a small, slight woman with flame red hair down the hallway, ducking quickly around the corner before the freight door grinds shut. 

_"Shit!_ Stay on the line!"


End file.
